It’s every game developer’s dream to see their creation on a store shelf, right alongside the Marios, GTAs, and Calls of Duty of the world. The retail launch of Axiom Verge represents a huge milestone for me personally, and I’m grateful for all of the support my fans, friends, and family have given me during this journey. I’m really looking forward to being able to walk into my local Target, GameStop, Walmart, or Best Buy and see Axiom Verge on the shelf TODAY! (Apologies, Europeans. The launch in Europe will be coming a bit later…)

Even though I’ve been working with BadLand Games to publish this, it was still a significant amount of work to get this out. Murphy’s Law was in effect every step of the way, from the timing of getting age ratings (because why use the age ratings for the digital version? That would be too easy!), to re-certification by the platform owners, scheduling production, tracking the shipments of the cartridges and discs often across continents and multiple time zones, etc. So it was not without a little emotion that I watched these videos that the packaging company sent me:

I’d seen and approved of all of the proofs. I knew on an intellectual level that the Switch cartridges had arrived at the packaging facility from Japan and were being assembled into cases, but it was all in email and spreadsheets. Seeing finished product coming off the line and being packed into boxes made it feel real in a way it somehow didn’t before. And just on Friday, I finally got my own advance copy!

In case you haven’t been following, there are going to be 5 different versions (or “skus” as they say in the retail biz): 3 different platforms (Switch, PS4, and Vita) x 2 different editions (standard and Multiverse). The reason it’s not 6 different versions is that Vita will only be available in the Multiverse Edition flavor. The difference between the Multiverse Edition and Standard is that the former includes a behind-the-scenes documentary made by 2 Player Productions – the guys behind all of the Double Fine Presents videos, as well as an art book, and a double sided poster. The Nintendo Switch version is a bit more expensive than the others due to cartridge costs, so we’re including the game soundtrack on CD with that one.

If you’re interested in picking up a copy, there’s a good list of retailers here. One favor I’d like to ask: I’ve heard that retailers are more likely to make the game visible if people ask for it by name. So whether you’re planning on buying it or not, if you happen to be in a store that sells games, please be sure to ask for Axiom Verge!

Before I go, I’d just like to take a moment and give a special shout out to the publisher, BadLand Games. As you may have seen elsewhere on my blog and Twitter, I’ve tried to be pretty open about my son Alastair’s health situation. In short, he was born healthy, but the doctors failed to treat a routine case of jaundice during a critical period when he was just days old. The result was a life-long condition called Kernicterus that is characterized by severe neurological damage which robbed Alastair of much of his motor control and hearing. The reason I mention this is that after we decided to move forward with BadLand Games as the publisher, they offered to donate 75% of their share to a special fund dedicated to Alastair’s ongoing health care costs. They didn’t want to publicize it, since none of us wanted to be seen as trying to use my son’s suffering as a marketing tool for the game. I hope this doesn’t come off that way. I just wanted to thank them for their generosity in offering that up, since it was definitely something they didn’t have to do.

Based on the amount of gratuitous creature-shooting featured in Axiom Verge, you might be surprised to learn that I'm a vegetarian. I have been for over 20 years. It's not something I discuss a lot or even encourage, because it's mostly a pain in the ass I have to put up with since my conscience won't let me do otherwise.

Case in point: Automobiles. From what I understand the glues and such in cars are made from animal bones/hooves/blood/muscle so there's no such thing as a 100% "vegetarian" car, but since I know it takes 2 or 3 dead cattle to fill an SUV with their skin, I try to avoid doing that. But for some reason it's considered luxurious and better to trim cars with cow hides, so the faster, better, and more-tech filled a car is, the more leather. Personally this kind of feels like when home electronics used to have fake wood paneling - I guess to make people feel like they were classy furniture - but whatever, if I understood people, I probably wouldn't be a game developer.

So anyway, now that we have our first child - one who is disabled and will need a wheelchair to go with him wherever he goes - we've been investigating various 3 row family haulers. But as soon as we think we've found the perfect car, we discover that you can't have this or that feature without getting leather seats. Usually stuff like navigation, collision sensors, parking sensors, power hatches, sun roofs, better engines, hybrid trims, etc, are packaged with leather, leaving you only with crappy bare-bones options.

If I'm to believe Quora, about 5.2 percent of the world was vegetarian (in 2015), though the 500 million vegetarians in India is more than 5.2 percent of the world, so...who knows where the numbers come from. And there's no telling how many of these people buy cars, but doesn't it seem like a substantial number that could matter for profit?

Because I was already making a list of 3 row family cars, what features we miss out on by not having leather, and how much they cost, I thought I would share it here. Maybe someone buying a car in early 2017 will find it useful. Maybe an automaker will read it and be all, "huh, we could make more money than we do" (but they won't, because because). We still may end up having to get leather just for safety features (maybe I can buy some cows to offset those that died?), or we may just have to make due with our 2014 Wrangler and its manually controlled everything.

3 Row Cars Standard With Leather Seats

Most luxury SUVs only come with leather, so this is sort of a no-brainer. But it really hurts that the safest, highest rated, most family friendly vehicle - the Volvo - is among them.

3 Row Cars That At Least Let You Get the Lowest, Crappiest Versions Without Leather Seats

Here I'm listing the features you CAN'T get without leather seats, since that was the most useful for us to rule out different cars. Also I put the amount of money automakers lose for each vegetarian/vegan who could have bought them.

3 Row Cars That Don't Sacrifice Anything Without Leather

Very short list here - Teslas are made by tree hugging (yet lead-footed, torque-loving) hippies, while Mercedes has something called MB-Tex that perfectly mimics the sweaty, thigh-burning discomfort you know you crave.

It’s been a while since I’ve sent a message out to everyone who signed up for this newsletter. I’ve been so caught up in the daily drama that is my son’s medical condition that there hasn’t been much time to focus on much else. (In case you have no idea what I’m talking about, I wrote about it in some detail here.) I’m glad to report on that front that Alastair recently had a successful (if very unpleasant) surgery for a cochlear implant, which means that he is now able to hear some sounds in one ear. It’s a start.

My wife, Chloe, and I feel strongly that Alastair’s condition, called Kernicterus, should not isolate him from the world. We’ve both been pretty open about what’s going on in our private life on social media and in press interviews.

One of the world’s leading Axiom Verge speedrunners, Dimitrios Lianopoulos (who goes by the handle GVirus), has been following our story and decided to leverage the strength of the speedrunning community to help support research into a cure or treatment of Kernicterus. He organized a charity Metroidvania speedrunning marathon which will kick off on Black Friday (today) – 11/25 – at 5pm ET/2pm PT and run for 48 hours! If you live in Montreal, you can go watch it live.

If you want to stream it, you can watch it at https://www.twitch.tv/noresetmarathon. All funds raised will go toward the Kernicterus Research Fund at the Kernicterus Center at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City. I’m immensely grateful and moved that GVirus thought to do this. Kernicterus is a relatively rare condition, so any awareness and research money that can be raised will be enormously impactful. Please see the attached flyer for more information.

I hope you can join us for the marathon and donate to this worthy cause!

Thanks,

Tom

P.S. If you can’t watch the stream but want to donate anyway, please click here. To designate your gift to the Kernicterus Center, go to “Gift Designation”, choose "Other, Specify below" in the dropdown menu, and then write underneath in the “Comments” field “Kernicterus – In honor of Alastair Happ”.

At long last, I will finally be able to say without any caveats that Axiom Verge is playable on your favorite console. I will soon be able to say that whether your primary platform is Steam, PS4, Wii U, or now Xbox One, Axiom Verge is available. When will I be able to say this? The final piece of the console puzzle, the Xbox One version, will launch on Friday,September 30 – a mere 2 weeks from now! Mark your calendars and tell your friends! Like with the other platforms, it will be $19.99, but it will have a 10% introductory discount through October 10.

There’s a certain irony that Xbox One is the last console to get Axiom Verge. When I started development almost 7 years ago, Xbox 360 (in particular, the Xbox Live Indie Games service) was my target platform. Like many indie developers, I vastly underestimated the scope of what the game would eventually become and the time needed to achieve my full vision, and by the time I was ready to launch, the development framework I was using (XNA) was no longer compatible with Xbox’s latest system.

For anyone interested in a history lesson, XNA was developed by Microsoft as a free set of APIs for independent developers to use to create games for consoles – without the need for expensive development hardware. At the time, this idea was revolutionary. Consoles were always the domain of large companies with big budgets. Development kits ran tens of thousands of dollars, so hobbyists, or even small studios, could never afford to develop games for consoles without a publisher who could provide the necessary hardware and software. XNA made it possible for anyone with access to a simple PC to develop games that could be released on a console.

But it was often more than that. Although consumers probably saw a lot of low quality shovelware clogging up XBLIG (opening the floodgates does let some sewage through), to XBLIG developers, it was about community and developers helping each other. A lot of talent cut their teeth on XBLIG. Ska Studios first achieved notoriety with their title I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1. Now you may know them better as the developer of Salt and Sanctuary.

In fact, James Silva, who was the sole member of Ska Studios until his wife Michelle joined him and turned it into a 2-person company, wrote a book about making games with XNA. James Petruzzi and Tim Dodd used that book to learn how to make games for XBLIG. In case you’re not familiar with James and Tim, they’re the people behind the upcoming metroidVANIA, Chasm. (Incidentally, Chasm and Axiom Verge share something else in common. Dan Adelman is handling the biz dev and marketing for both games, and we often show our titles together. This was our setup at PAX East – sorry for the potato quality.

(If you’ve already played Axiom Verge and enjoyed it, you may want to sign up for the Chasm newsletter and start following it too. But I digress…)

XNA and XBLIG were part of Microsoft’s deep commitment to indie development during the Xbox 360 years, but unfortunately the decision was made to shut both of these down during the Xbox One years. The market had changed, and I suppose Microsoft concluded that there were plenty of reasonably priced tools for small developers to use to get access to consoles, so that tech no longer filled a vacuum.

Bringing Axiom Verge to Xbox One

Many XNA developers needed to make a change when Microsoft discontinued support. Fortunately, open source versions of XNA called MonoGame and FNA stepped into the void. I was able to convert Axiom Verge and continue development. Unfortunately, these weren’t supported on Xbox One… until now. Thanks to the popularity and quality of games using Monogame, Microsoft made the decision to have Monogame ported and officially supported on Xbox One!

Now, porting an entire development framework is a lot more complicated than just porting a game. There are few people who could tackle such a complex task, but Tom Spilman from Sickhead Games is kind of a wizard. He was able to port MonoGame to PS Vita and took up the challenge of porting it to Xbox One as well. Since he was already familiar with the code base of Axiom Verge, he decided to use it as the guinea pig for getting the framework up and running. Although the MonoGame port still has some rough edges to polish up before it’ll be trivially easy for all MonoGame games to move to Xbox One seamlessly, the Axiom Verge port is great. I’m proud that of all of the XNA games that originally targeted the Xbox family, Axiom Verge will be the first to have a native version running on Xbox One… with hopefully many more XNA games to follow!

With the Wii U version of AV released and the XB1 version in certification, I thought I'd take a moment to talk about my son, Alastair. It's not something I talk about a lot because, basically, I don't want to make you depressed.

Over a year ago I posted, over-optimistically, the Alastair had returned from the Neonatal ICU mostly unscathed. I was very wrong. I don't want to deluge you with details, but, to put it in simplest terms, my son has Kernicterus, which you get when your doctor doesn't treat newborn jaundice on time. His mind is completely functional but his motor control is extremely damaged, so his movements are either super stiff or super random. He can't sit up or crawl, and it's doubtful he'll ever be able to walk. He might be able to play video games one day with eye tracking software or the like, but probably not reflex intensive games like Axiom Verge. He can eat but can't pick up food or even bring his hands to his mouth unassisted. He will eventually be able to hear - after a cochlear implant surgery he's undergoing in a few weeks - but everything's going to sound like an 8-bit NES sound sample.

There are basically no approved treatments for Kernicterus in the US, which leaves unapproved treatments. He received a bone marrow stem cell transplant in Mexico (your stem cells become classified as a drug by the FDA once they leave your body, hence why it's not allowed here). So far if we've seen any improvements, they're very minor. Nothing like you hear about celebrities like Gordie Howe, John Brodie, or Bart Starr who could walk after stem cell treatments. There's no way to know if this is because Kernicterus is just that much worse than other brain injuries or if it's that I would need to bump up to embryonic cells, which can cause tumors, and which they won't use on children even in Mexico. We also got him a hyperbaric chamber which, according to recent studies, leads to improvements in patients with cerebral palsy, though kernicterus is rare enough that it's not part of those. We've also heard of other children using thc/cdb oil with a lot of success (in 2 cases even restoring the hearing of all things), so we've begun the process of applying for a medical marijuana card.

None of these things are covered by insurance (which, being an indie, I need to pay for in full), so you can imagine how thankful I am that Axiom Verge can support the tens of thousands of dollars this is costing. We have also begun a malpractice lawsuit - but this is a years long process that is just in its infancy, and may not really cover the overall costs anyway.

Alastair's First Birthday

I wish I could reciprocate what Axiom Verge and its customers have done for us. But I don't get that much time to field questions in the comments, Steam forums, or Facebook. To be honest I don't even get to work a full 40 hour week, even though I work at home now. We regularly see a number of therapists and doctors - a physical therapist, an occupational therapist, a speech therapist, a feeding therapist, 2 audiologists, a neurologist, a GDI doctor, various surgeons - as well as the associated scans and tests. It's hard to stay focused on anything for very long with so much going on. I've become that flaky person we all know who agrees to do something but then never replies to urgent mail about how the deadline is tomorrow and nothing's been done.

A lot of people say, "don't worry about work, focus on your son" - but bear in mind my work is directly correlated with my son's well being. Rather than just being a hobby, Axiom Verge (and whatever else I do in the future) has now become necessary for supporting him and his medical needs for the rest of his life.

I’ve been waiting a long time to be able to say this: Axiom Verge will be coming to Wii U on September 1 in both the NOA and NOE regions!

When I first announced Axiom Verge about 4 years ago, there was tremendous excitement from Nintendo fans who had been waiting for years for a true 2D Metroid-style action/adventure/exploration game. Because of some technical issues, however, I wasn’t able to launch it on a Nintendo platform straight away. Some people were understandably upset:

The Nintendo games of my childhood are what inspired me to make Axiom Verge. Metroid is probably one of the more obvious influences, but it’s actually a lot more than that. Axiom Verge actually started out as an exercise in game design. I wanted to deconstruct my favorite games from my youth and see what would happen if I took the best elements of each and put them together. The Bionic Commando’s grapple hook and Rygar’s Yo-Yo in the setting of Blaster Master and Shatterhand. I wanted to see what would fit together – and just as importantly what wouldn’t work.

You can still see some of those influences:

Shatterhand

Axiom Verge

Blater Master

Axiom Verge

But the influence of the olden times doesn’t end there. Remember glitches that would show up in the game if dust got in the cartridge? Remember Game Genie?

I used to love playing around with that thing. I used to love seeing what would happen if I started up one game and then swapped out the cartridge. It used to fascinate me as a kid that I could walk through a glitched wall into an area that was never intended to be seen. Or I could make enemies behave in strange ways. Sometimes it would freeze the game, and sometimes it would do something useful, but I just loved being able to experiment with all of that stuff. So I included glitching as a primary mechanic in the game.

There’s also another deep connection between Axiom Verge and Nintendo. Dan Adelman, who’s been working with me on the business and marketing side of Axiom Verge for almost 2 years now, was the one who started up the indie games business at NOA about 10 years ago. He’s helped tons of indies get their start from World of Goo to Cave Story to Shovel Knight.

So for so many reasons, Axiom Verge truly belongs on a Nintendo platform. It was only because of Blitworks’ amazing technical skill that we were able to make that happen, and I’m grateful for their work on the pixel-perfect port. Even though the game’s been out for a little while on other systems, the Wii U version is probably the best one. It’s the only console version to support leaderboards for the dedicated Speedrun Mode. And the Wii U GamePad will allow people to have the world map viewable at all times without pausing the game – or to play Off-TV.